Oliver Twist (1948) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error An orphan named Oliver Twist meets a pickpocket on the streets of London. From there, he joins a household of boys who are trained to steal for their master. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 24 titles created 09 Mar 2012 a list of 23 titles created 18 Dec 2012 a list of 43 titles created 19 Jul 2014 a list of 48 titles created 15 Dec 2014 a list of 30 titles created 2 months ago Search for " Oliver Twist " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 1 BAFTA Film Award. Another 1 win & 1 nomination.

See more awards » Photos A humble orphan suddenly becomes a gentleman with the help of an unknown benefactor. Director: David Lean The Passionate Friends were in love when young, but separated, and she married an older man. Then Mary Justin meets Steven Stratton again and they have one last fling together in the Alps. Director: David Lean Cultural mistrust and false accusations doom a friendship in British colonial India between an Indian doctor, an Englishwoman engaged to marry a city magistrate, and an English educator. Director: David Lean Henry Hobson is a successful bootmaker and tyrannical widower of three daughters. The girls each want to leave their father by getting married, but Henry refuses as marriage traditions require him to pay out settlements. Director: David Lean An adaptation of the classic Dickens tale, where an orphan meets a pickpocket on the streets of London. From there, he joins a household of boys who are trained to steal for their master. Director: Roman Polanski This "story of a ship," the British destroyer HMS Torrin, is told in flash backs by survivors as they cling to a life raft.

Directors: Noël Coward, David Lean Stars: Noël Coward, John Mills, Bernard Miles A lonely American woman unexpectedly finds romance in Venice, Italy. Director: David Lean Oliver Twist I (TV Movie 1982) Crime | Drama The classic Dickens tale of an orphan boy who escapes the horrors of the orphanage only to be taken in by a band of thieves and pickpockets. Director: Clive Donner The middle-class family of a young woman cannot understand why she delays in marrying a respectable young man. They know nothing about her long-standing affair with a Frenchman. Director: David Lean Set in the wake of the 1916 Easter Rising, a married woman in a small Irish village has an affair with a troubled British officer. Director: David Lean Adapted from a play by Noel Coward, Charles and his second wife Ruth, are haunted by the ghost of his first wife, Elvira. Medium Madame Arcati tries to help things out by contacting the ghost. Director: David Lean Noel Coward's attempt to show how the ordinary people lived between the wars. Just after WWI the Gibbons family moves to a nice house in the suburbs. An ordinary sort of life is led by the ...

See full summary » Director: David Lean Edit Storyline Based on the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist is about an orphan boy who runs away from a workhouse and meets a pickpocket on the streets of London. Oliver is taken in by the pickpocket and he joins a household of young boys who are trained to steal for their master. This version of Oliver Twist is topped by Alec Guinness's masterly performance of arch-thug Fagin. Written by Jenny Evans <J.Evans@uts.edu.au> A Screen Event To Be Remembered For All Time ! Genres: 30 July 1951 (USA) See more » Also Known As: As Aventuras de Oliver Twist See more » Filming Locations: Did You Know? Trivia The company that trained and supplied animals for film and television supplied the Staffordshire Bull Terrier for the role of 'Bullseye' and also the Bull Terrier who played the role of 'Bullseye' in the film adaptation of Lionel Bart's musical 'Oliver!'. See more » Goofs When Oliver is in dock being tried for pick-pocketing, after the judge says "Oh stand away" the camera becomes an Oliver POV shot.

Just before Oliver totally collapses he looks up to the ceiling, (and therefore so does the camera) briefly showing the full studio rafters, complete with lights, and the set microphone, and part of the "set ceiling". See more » Quotes Nancy : Let him be or I'll put that mark on you that'll send me to the gallows before me time. My Hat, It Has Three Corners (uncredited) (United Kingdom) – See all my reviews When his mother just about makes it to the workhouse before giving birth then dying, Oliver Twist is born into the only world he has ever known  the workhouse and poverty. When he draws the short straw from among the children, Oliver asks for more food at dinner and promptly finds himself up for sale for £5 to any honest trader willing to take him in. Oliver is taken to work for an undertaker until a fight over his mother makes him run away to London where the masters will never find him. Taken in by Fagin's group of child pickpockets, Oliver starts to settle in, until a brush with the law starts to bring his family history to the attention of those lacking scruples.

Watching this film now (or indeed at the time of its release in the UK) it is hard to imagine that it would have sparked a riot in Berlin in its first showing in 1949 or that it was banned for two years in America on the grounds of being anti-Semitic and was only released after significant cuts (10 minutes) had been made. Of course the cynic in me would suggest that the US was making any excuse to limit British films in its cinema due to competition (they don't need to do that any more!) but I guess history is written by the winners and Hollywood is definitely winning that battle. Ironically enough the film was also banned in Israel and Egypt because of Fagin  with Israel claiming that Fagin was anti-Semetic and Egypt claiming he was too sympathetic. Any roads, regardless of the historical controversy this film is still considered by many to be the definitive version of Dickens' story and often is in top ten or so when polls for 'greatest British films' are carried out. The plot is dark and sombre as befits the source material, painting a dark world of thieves, poverty and workhouses within which the story of Oliver and his destiny are told.

In essence it is a simple story but it is the atmosphere and characters that make it more interesting. This may have been as successful as some of Lean's other films due to the daft controversies around it, but his is still a very effective job as director. The film feels Victorian and hopeless  just like the lives of those in the story, and Lean creates a real atmosphere of despair and fear that is enjoyably dark and has moments that I was surprised to see in a film of the period. The cast do well with the characters and are a big part of its working. Ignoring all the hysteria over 'bad' characters being ethnic (good to see things haven't changed that much), Guinness is good as Fagin and doesn't allow himself to be just a ethnic stereotype  he is exploitative but he is also human and we get to see him as just being somebody else's 'boy' as well as Oliver. Newton is who I see when I think of Bill Sykes and Davies is a good Oliver even if his accent is way too posh for a workhouse baby and the film tends to lose him among all the more interesting and seedy characters we come across.

Support is good from the likes of Walsh, Sullivan, Newley and others, all combining to produce a colourful collection of dark characters in the seedy streets of London. Overall this is a good story even if it loses the Oliver story halfway through for a while in favour of the other characters. The direction is great and the whole film is dark and atmospheric. The acting is roundly good and supports the wealth of seedy characters on which the film is built. I'm not a massive fan of Dickens by and large but if I want to see a version of this story then this is the film I return to. 48 of 55 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Remembering Fagin and Ron Moody, the Man Who Played Him - Film & TV – Forward.com Remembering Fagin and Ron Moody, the Man Who Played Him Twitter The British Jewish actor Ron Moody, who died on June 11 at age 91, will be remembered for making Charles Dickens’ harshly anti-Semitic character Fagin into someone loveable.

In stage productions and the 1968 film of the musical Oliver!, Moody, who was born Ronald Moodnick, became the definitive interpreter of the role, despite the reservations of the show’s Jewish composer/lyricist Lionel Bart. As explained in Marc Napolitano’s “Oliver!: A Dickensian Musical” (2014) , Bart was hoping for a bigger star for his adaptation which premiered in London in 1960, such as Sid James, (born Solomon Joel Cohen), the low comedian celebrated for performing in Carry On films, a series of bawdy comic romps. When Moody was finally cast, Bart repeatedly objected, even to the press, that his Fagin was far too anti-Semitic an incarnation, reflecting the ferociously villainous Fagin portrayed onscreen by Alec Guinness in David Lean’s “Oliver Twist” (1948). As it was, Moody, a highly analytical and self-aware actor, consciously deconstructed the paradigmatic Guinness performance as Fagin. Guinness, with David Lean, echoed the vilest anti-Semitic imagery of the Nazi era in the immediate postwar era.

In 2012 Moody told an audience at the British Film Institute (BFI) that when he was first proposed the role, he felt the image of Fagin was “pretty vicious and unpleasant; I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to perpetuate what I considered to be an unfair, unpleasant image of Jewish people.” He asked himself, “How can you make a musical about a monster? [Fagin is] a monster in the book, a corrupter of children.

I could only change it.” Bart’s sprightly song “Pick a Pocket or Two” gave him a clue, as a comic improvisation: “I realized that the only way to play Fagin was to forget Dickens and create a clown and I used every trick I could think of to take Fagin away from Dickens’ concept and to bring it into more of an entertainment situation.” Moody added other layers of allusion, including the aspect of the Pied Piper, “all intended to distract from, to push away the monster of Dickens.” As his “Still Untitled (Not Quite) Autobiography” (2013) states: “I couldn’t resist adding a schmeckel (you should excuse the expression) of Yiddish to Fagin’s voice, a heimishe inflection, a hint of that marvellous klezmer music in the words that Leo Rosten has so brilliantly demonstrated in ‘The Joys of Yiddish.’” The result must have succeeded, because Moody’s characterization instantly became beloved, and he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar.

At the same BFI event, fellow actor Kenneth Cranham told Moody that in “Oliver!,” “You’re like a Rembrandt painting,” referring to the director Carol Reed’s carefully presented dramatic chiaroscuro. In a 2013 video interview for Red Carpet News TV he likewise described his Fagin as “malevolently naughty…but charming and nice.” This transformation of a viciously anti-Semitic literary portrait into a joyous musical onscreen image was the result of serious ratiocination, the product of Moody’s earlier training. As noted in his memoir, his initial career plan was to become a sociology professor at the London School of Economics. There he devoutly attended lectures by the philosopher of science Karl Popper, of Austrian Jewish origin. Popper’s course on scientific method, Moody admitted, “has stayed with me to this day, shaping everything I think or do or act.” Only in his late 20s, after successful amateur theatrical sketches in which he would imitate Groucho Marx and others, did Moody seriously consider a professional career in performing.

His first high-profile London performance was in a 1959 production of Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide.” Although his years of concentrating on Fagin onstage and onscreen may have hindered career advancement – along with deciding to turn down the role of Doctor Who, a British science-fiction TV staple - Moody did play other challenging parts. One was Ippolit Matveevich Vorobyaninov, a delectably snooty Russian aristocrat in Mel Brooks’ underrated “Twelve Chairs” (1970). Affecting an accent doubtless learned at home from his Russian Jewish father - his mother was from Lithuania – Moody’s masterly comic timing and explosiveness prevailed opposite the flaccid characterization of Ostap Bender by a young Frank Langella, never an inspired comedian. Moody’s concentrated, wall-climbing energy meant he could hold audiences’ attention onscreen even with such veteran scene-stealers as the brilliantly Basset Hound-faced Margaret Rutherford, in “The Mouse on the Moon” (1963) and “Murder Most Foul” (1964).

Moody continued to perform small comic roles in films and on TV, yet when asked about career highlights, he would mention a serious half-hour program filmed for the BBC in 1970. As the sadistic gym teacher Cracker Carstairs, Moody terrified his pupil Waller, played by the young Michael Kitchen in his onscreen debut, in “Is That Your Body, Boy?” If this and other Moody performances, currently languishing in archives, were to be rebroadcast, the unjustly one-sided impression of his career and talent might be corrected. He was repeatedly cast as Sherlock Holmes, a character in which the actor’s Basil Rathbone-like profile and capacity for conveying thought helped him excel. Another such was a 1985 Thames Television production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Caucasian Chalk Circle,” co-starring Alison Steadman and Alun Armstrong. Playing Azdak the judge with scenery-chewing relish, Moody seemed to consciously allude to the Judgment of Solomon from 1 Kings 3:16-28 as well as the opening scenes of “King Lear” in delivering his judicial verdicts.

With this density of dramatic allusion, Moody tried to tackle other anti-Semitic stereotypes, notably by writing “All the Way To The Bank,” a so-far unproduced musical version of “The Merchant of Venice,” turning the Shakespearian villain Shylock into a “clown” in the process. Although this project, along with others, was never realized, Moody’s achievement with Fagin in “Oliver!” will continue to be appreciated, especially with ongoing international revivals of the musical under the aegis of producer Cameron Mackintosh, and “Consider Yourself: The Lionel Bart Story,” an upcoming musical film starring Geoffrey Rush. Benjamin Ivry is a frequent contributor to the Forward. The Forward's independent journalism depends on donations from readers like you. Benjamin Ivry Your Comments The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, The Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles. Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not and will be deleted. Egregious commenters will be banned from commenting.

While we generally do not seek to edit or actively moderate comments, our spam filter prevents most links and certain key words from being posted and the Forward reserves the right to remove comments for any reason. "Oliver Twist" - Alec Guinness at 100 - Pictures - CBS News Alec Guinness at 100 "The Man In the White Suit" A portrait of actor Alec Guinness (1914-2000), from his 1951 comedy, "The Man in the White Suit." On Friday, June 13, to celebrate the centenary of Guinness' birth, New York City's Film Forum will launch a retrospective of 30 films (several recently restored) from the actor's remarkable career. The retrospective, "Alec Guinness 100," will later play in Chicago, Silver Spring, Md., and Bryn Mawr, Pa.

Among the films featured are his collaborations with David Lean (including "Oliver Twist," "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and "Lawrence of Arabia"), comic gems from Ealing Studios, and the movie that defined him for a new generation, "Star Wars." By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan Credit: Ealing Studios "Great Expectations" Born in London on April 2, 1914, Alec Guinness de Cuffe never knew his father, a bank manager, who was not married to his mother. After her marriage to another man, Alec was sent off at a young age to boarding school. "I think I always was an actor from the age of five or six," Guinness told the BBC in 1973. "I was always in dormitories at school telling stories [and] acting them out." He studied briefly at the Royal Academy (making his first stage appearance at age 20), and later joined John Gielgud's theatre company. After appearing in a stage production of Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations," Guinness was contacted by director David Lean and producer Ronald Neame to appear in their 1946 film version, as Herbert Pocket (left).

Credit: Universal Pictures "Oliver Twist" Alec Guinness as Fagin, with John Howard Davies as Oliver, in David Lean's "Oliver Twist" (1948). Guinness said it was the only role he actively went after, winning it after being given a screen test by Lean. Credit: Rank Organization "Kind Hearts and Coronets" In the Ealing Studios comedy "Kind Hearts and Coronets" (1949), Alec Guinness played the Duke of D'Ascoyne and seven other members of the family - all of whom are targeted for murder by a poor relation eager to claim the family title for himself. Guinness said he was originally offered four parts in the movie, and told Roger Ebert in 1982 that he couldn't see the sense in playing only half the D'Ascoyne family: "I cabled them offering to play all eight. To my surprise, they accepted." Credit: Ealing Studios "Kind Hearts and Coronets" Alec Guinness as seven surviving members of the D'Ascoyne family. Though "Kind Hearts and Coronets" is today considered a comedy classic, it had at least one detractor. The real-life Bishop of Matabeleland, The Rt.

Rev William James Hughes, was "very aggrieved and indignant" and sought to have the film banned, according to a letter from his attorney sent to the film's producer in 1957. The letter stated that the murderous central character's claim to be the Bishop of Matabeleland had caused Rev. Hughes "extreme embarrassment." Credit: Ealing Studios "A Run For Your Money" Alec Guinness, with rugby ball, starred in the Ealing comedy "A Run for Your Money" (1949), playing a London columnist caught in the misadventures of two Welshmen visiting the city to collect a newspaper contest's prize money. Credit: Rialto "Last Holiday" In the 1950 comedy "Last Holiday," written by J.B. Priestley, Alec Guinness plays a man who decides to live it up at a fancy hotel after receiving a doctor's prognosis that he's only a few weeks to live. Credit: Rialto Pictures "The Mudlark" Alec Guinness played Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli opposite Irene Dunn's Queen Victoria in the historical drama, "The Mudlark" (1950).

Credit: 20th Century Fox "The Lavender Hill Mob" "The world is ours!" One of Ealing's most successful comedies, "The Lavender Hill Mob" (1951) starred Alec Guinness as a bank clerk who hatches a plot to steal gold bullion and smuggle it out of the country disguised as Eiffel Tower paperweights. Credit: Rialto Pictures "The Lavender Hill Mob" Alec Guinness (who received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor) and Stanley Holloway - before the complications ensue in their gold heist plot - in "The Lavender Hill Mob" (1951). Credit: Rialto Pictures "The Man in the White Suit" Another winning Ealing comedy was "The Man in the White Suit" (1951), in which Alec Guinness played a scientist who invents an indestructible fabric that resists dirt. His purported boon to mankind is less than welcomed by business interests, trade unions and washerwomen. The film earned an Oscar nomination for its screenplay. Credit: Rialto Pictures Family Photo In 1938 Alec Guinness married actress Merula Sylvia Salaman (with whom he appeared at the Old Vic).

They had one son, Matthew. Left: The Guinness family poses at an airport in London, December 27, 1951. Credit: AFP/Getty Images "The Promoter" In the 1952 comedy "The Promoter" (a.k.a. "The Card"), Alec Guinness played a social climber whose misadventures include romance with Glynis Johns. Credit: Universal Pictures Alec Guinness cavorted with Yvonne de Carlo in the 1953 comedy, "Captain's Paradise." Credit: Rialto Pictures "Malta Story" In this 1953 photo, actor Alec Guinness poses in flying kit at Pinewood Studios near London, for his starring part as an RAF pilot in "Malta Story." During World War II Guinness served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, commanding a landing craft as part of the invasion of Sicily. Credit: AFP/Getty Images "The Detective" "Looking for a black cat in a coal hole during an eclipse of the sun would be a child's task compared with mine." The 1954 comedy "The Detective" (a.k.a "Father Brown"), based on a G.K.

Chesterton character, starred Alec Guinness as a Catholic priest who matches wits with a nimble thief. Credit: Columbia PIctures "The Prisoner" A Soviet block interrogator (Jack Hawkins) tries to get a jailed cleric (Alec Guinness) to admit to treason in the 1955 drama, "The Prisoner." Credit: Columbia Pictures "The Ladykillers" Alexander Mackendrick's "The Ladykillers" (1955) starred Alec Guinness as Professor Marcus, leader of a band of thieves disguised as a band of classical musicians, who find themselves having to dispose of their aged landlady when she discovers their true identity. The delightfully dark comedy co-starred Cecil Parker and Herbert Lom (left), Danny Green and Peter Sellers; it won BAFTAs for its script and for Katie Johnson as the widow whose life hangs in the balance. Credit: Rialto "The Swan" Grace Kelly and Alec Guinness are a possible royal match in the 1956 film "The Swan." Kelly, who had met Prince Rainier of Monaco just prior to filming, would marry into Monaco royalty by the time "The Swan" was released.

Credit: MGM "The Bridge on the River Kwai" "What have I done?" Alec Guinness as Col. Nicholson, the by-the-book commander of British troops held in a Japanese POW camp in Southeast Asia, who oversees the construction of a railway bridge for the enemy in David Lean's incomparable war film, "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957). Credit: Columbia Pictures "The Bridge on the River Kwai" David Lean (left), with Alec Guinness and Sessue Hayakawa on the set of "The Bridge on the River Kwai." The film won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Guinness). Credit: Columbia Pictures "The Horse's Mouth" "Of course you want to be an artist. Everybody does, once. But they get over it, like measles and chicken pox." Alec Guinness received an Oscar nomination, not for acting, but for his screenplay of the 1959 film, "The Horse's Mouth," based on Joyce Cary's novel. Guinness' performance as the artist Gully Jimson was masterful.

Credit: Criterion Collection "The Scapegoat" Alec Guinness played a dual role - a British university professor and a French nobleman who cross paths, and switch lives - in the 1959 film of Daphne du Maurier's "The Scapegoat." Credit: MGM "Our Man in Havana" In "Our Man in Havana" (1959), from the Graham Greene novel, Alec Guinness is a vacuum cleaner salesman who plays British intelligence after being recruited to spy in pre-revolutionary Cuba. Credit: Columbia Pictures "Tunes of Glory" "We're on a first-name basis in this regiment. Your first name is Derek; my first name is Major." In "Tunes of Glory" (1960), Alec Guinness played a larger-than-life British officer who is to pass on the command of his Scottish regiment to John Mills. The producers originally wanted Guinness and Mills to play the opposing roles, but Guinness lobbied for the characters that ran counter to expectations.

Credit: United Artists "A Majority of One" In the love story "A Majority of One" (1961), based on the stage production by Leonard Spigelgass, Alec Guinness played a Japanese businessman courting Rosalind Russell. Credit: Warner Brothers "Damn the Defiant!" In 1962's "Damn the Defiant" (a.k.a. "HMS Defiant"), Alec Guinness played a ship commander facing mutiny and a clash of wills with his lieutenant (Dirk Bogarde) during the Napoleonic Wars. Credit: Columbia Pictures "Lawrence of Arabia" "I think you are another of these desert-loving English." In David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), Alec Guinness played the Arab Prince Faisal, who works in league with the British officer T.E. Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) in combating Turkish forces during the First World War. Omar Sharif (center) co-starred. Credit: Columbia PIctures "Lawrence of Arabia" Alec Guinness as Prince Faisal in "Lawrence of Arabia." Surprisingly, Guinness was not director David Lean's first choice for the role (Laurence Olivier was).

Credit: Columbia PIctures "The Fall of the Roman Empire" "Please don't bring me his head. I wouldn't know what to do with it." The Samuel Bronston spectacle "The Fall of the Roman Empire" (1964), directed by Anthony Mann, was a more-intelligent-than-usual epic featuring a cast that included Alec Guinness (as the emperor Marcus Aurelius), James Mason, Mel Ferrer and Rafael Luis Calvo, in addition to Sophia Loren, Stephen Boyd, Christopher Plummer and Omar Sharif. Credit: Paramount PIctures "Dylan" After two Broadway appearances in the 1940s and '50s - in Terence Rattigan's "Flare Path," and T.S. Eliot's "The Cocktail Party" - Alec Guinness starred with Kate Reid in "Dylan" (1964), about the poet Dylan Thomas. Guinness won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. Credit: Friedman-Abeles "Doctor Zhivago" In David Lean's epic "Doctor Zhivago" (1965), from the Boris Pasternack novel, Alec Guinness (pictured with Rita Tushingham) played a Soviet KGB officer.

Credit: MGM Alec Guinness and Gina Lollobrigida starred in the 1966 bedroom farce, "Hotel Paradiso." Credit: MGM "The Comedians" In "The Comedians" (1967), based on the Graham Greene novel, Alec Guinness played a businessman dealing in arms with the Haitian regime of "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Richard Burton co-starred. Credit: MGM "Cromwell" Guinness starred as the British monarch Charles I, who has a date with the executioner, in the historical drama "Cromwell" (1970). Credit: Columbia Pictures "Scrooge" Alec Guinness appeared as Marley's Ghost in the 1971 musical, "Scrooge," opposite Albert Finney's miserly Ebenezer Scrooge. Credit: National General Pictures "Hitler: The Last Ten Days" Alec Guinness portrayed Adolf Hitler in the final hours of the war, in "Hitler: The Last Ten Days" (1973). Credit: Paramount PIctures "Murder by Death" So, did the butler do it?

Alec Guinness played a blind butler in the Neil Simon spoof "Murder By Death" (1976), in which some of the biggest names in crime-solving (including Elsa Lancaster as Miss Marbles, Peter Sellers as Sidney Wang, and James Coco as Milo Perrier) try to unravel a murder mystery. Credit: Columbia PIctures "Star Wars" In 1977 Guinness told the BBC's Michael Parkinson that the script for "Star Wars" was delivered by George Lucas, "an up-and-coming, very respected young director. And then when I opened it and found it was science fiction, I thought, 'Oh, simply not for me.' "Then I started reading it and it seemed the dialogue was pretty ropey, but I had to go on turning the page. That's an essential in any script. "And I met him, and we got along very well, and I found myself doing it." Credit: 20th Century Fox/Lucasfilm "Star Wars" "You can't win, Darth.

If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." Alec Guinness added gravitas and a sly wink to "Star Wars" as the Jedi knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, seen here in a light-saber duel to the death with Darth Vader. He earned his third acting Oscar nomination. Credit: 20th Century Fox/Lucasfilm "Star Wars" Despite appearing in the sequels "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi," Guinness grew less enamored with the "Star Wars" series as time went on. In his memoir, "A Positively Final Appearance," Guinness reflected on the saga at the time of the 1997 release of the Special Editions: I have no intention of revisiting any galaxy. I shrivel inside each time it's mentioned. Twenty years ago when the film was first shown, it had a freshness, also a sense of moral good and fun. Then I began to be uneasy at the influence it might be having. The bad penny first dropped in San Francisco when a sweet-faced boy of 12 told me proudly that he had seen 'Star Wars' over a hundred times. His elegant mother nodded with approval.

Looking into the boy's eyes I thought I detected little star-shells of madness beginning to form, and I guessed that one day they would explode. "I'd love you to do something for me," I said. "Oh, anything! Anything!" the boy said rapturously. "You won't like what I'll ask you to do." "Anything, sir, anything." "Well, do you think you can promise never to see 'Star Wars' again?" Credit: 20th Century Fox/Lucasfilm "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" In the 1979 BBC miniseries "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," Alec Guinness starred as John le Carre's George Smiley, a retired spymaster who is called upon to help finger a Soviet mole in the highest echelons of British intelligence. Guinness returned to the role in 1982 for "Smiley's People." Credit: BBC "Lovesick" In the comedy "Lovesick" (1983), Guinness appeared as the ghostly figure of Sigmund Freud a psychiatrist in need of a romantic intervention.

Credit: Warner Brothers "A Passage to India" Alec Guinness as Godbole, with Victor Banner and Judy Davis, in "A Passage to India" (1984), form the book by E.M. Forster. It was Guinness' sixth collaboration with director David Lean. Credit: Columbia Pictures "A Passage to India" Guinness had at first resisted playing the Hindu Brahmin, Professor Godbole. He and David Lean quarreled during shooting, and much of Guinness' performance ended up on the cutting-room floor. In a letter to Lean at the time of its release, Guinness described the film as "marvelously good and [I] do congratulate you most heartily. It is expansive, handsome, gripping and yet somehow intimate. . . . Also I think it is beautifully acted - with one excruciating exception. … "For my own part I'm afraid I thought I was sickeningly awful. I thought it was poor at the time we were doing it but I hadn't realized how wide of the mark I was. … "John Brabourne [the producer] was right in his original objection. Well, there it is and some of the press have rightly pointed it out.

One thing I am now grateful for is the disappearance of the song and dance - at least the agony isn't protracted." Credit: Columbia Pictures Little Dorrit" Among his final film appearances, Alec Guinness' performance as William Dorrit in the 1998 adaptation of Charles Dickens' "Little Dorrit" (released as a two-part film) earned him his fourth Oscar nomination for acting. Guinness also appeared in "A Handful of Dust" and Steven Soderbergh's "Kafka," as well as the TV productions "A Foreign Field" and "Interview Day." Guinness died on August 5, 2000 at Midhurst Hospital in Sussex, England, at age 86. Credit: Cannon Films "The Man in the White Suit" After running at New York's Film Forum, the retrospective "Alec Guinness 100" will be presented later this summer at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Springs, Md., and the Bryn Mawr Film Institute in Bryn Mawr, Pa.

For more info: Alec Guinness - Film Actor, Screenwriter, Television Actor - Biography.com Famous British Actors Synopsis Born on April 2, 1914, in Marylebone, England, Alec Guinness started doing stage work in the 1930s and performed in a number of classics. He established a film career both in Britain and in the U.S. and received several Oscar nominations, winning for The Bridge on the River Kwai. Other prominent films included Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, Star Wars and A Passage to India. He died on August 5, 2000. Early Years Alec Guinness de Cuffe was born on April 2, 1914, in Maida Vale, a neighborhood of west London. On his birth certificate, the spot for the father’s name was left blank, which indicated that his parents were not married. Scottish banker Andrew Geddes paid for Guinness’ private school education, but the identity of his father was never revealed. After finishing school in 1932, Guinness began working as an apprentice copywriter in a London advertising agency.

His desire to act soon became overriding, and the following year he auditioned for and won a small scholarship to the Fay Compton Studio of Dramatic Art; he made his stage debut in 1934 in Queer Cargo. He followed that role with an appearance in Hamlet, and by the time World War II began and Guinness enlisted in the Royal Navy, he had appeared in over 20 major stage productions. Adding to his resume were appearances with several acting heavyweights, such as Sir John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft and Edith Evans. Early Film Work Guinness’ film career began with his portrayal of Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946), and he continued on with Charles Dickens with his memorable portrayal of Fagin in Oliver Twist in 1948. Another notable performance of the era came with the 1949 film Kind Hearts and Coronets, in which he played a total of eight characters, including women. This film was followed by his portrayal of Benjamin Disraeli in the 1950 film The Mudlark.

Roles in The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), The Ladykillers (1955) and The Swan (1956) all helped catapult Guinness to stardom, the 1950s proving to be a productive and important decade in Guinness’ career. He earned a best actor Oscar and Golden Globe for The Bridge on the River Kwai in 1957 and received another Oscar nomination the next year, this time as a screenwriter, for the satirical film The Horse’s Mouth. Other Academy nominations have included The Lavender Hill Mob, Star Wars (1977) and Little Dorrit (1988). 1960s and 1970s During the 1960s, Guinness cemented his acting credentials with roles in such landmark films as Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Doctor Zhivago (1965) and The Comedians (1967).

The 1970s ushered in equal amounts of success, as Guinness appeared in such notable films as Cromwell and Scrooge (1970), Hitler: The Last Ten Days (1973) and Caesar and Cleopatra (1976). Even with all these notable works under his belt, Alec Guinness might still be most widely known for playing Obi-Wan (Ben) Kenobi in Star Wars (1977). The film was an international sensation, and Guinness’ quietly powerful portrayal of the wise Jedi knight brought his name to a whole new generation of film audiences. After Star Wars’ nearly unprecedented success, Guinness reprised the role in the film’s equally successful sequels, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). Guinness reportedly hated working on Star Wars so much that he claims Obi-Wan’s death was his idea, as a means to limit his involvement in the film. He was awarded a CBE in 1955, and four years later he was knighted for his accomplishments in theater and film.

He also received an Honorary Academy Award for advancing the art of screen acting through a host of memorable and distinguished performances. Later Life Guinness played John Le Carre ’s master spy, George Smiley, in a pair of acclaimed 1980s TV miniseries, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People. His final role was in the TV movie Eskimo Day in 1996. The final part of his autobiography, which already comprised Blessings in Disguise (1985) and My Name Escapes Me (1996), was published in 1999 as A Positively Final Appearance. His official biography was written by Piers Paul Read and released in 2003. Guinness married the artist, playwright and actress Merula Salaman in 1938, and they had a son in 1940, Matthew Guinness, who later became an actor. At 86 years of age, Alec Guinness died from liver cancer in Sussex on August 5, 2000, after receiving treatment for glaucoma and being diagnosed with prostate cancer.

His widow died two months after him and was buried alongside her husband of 62 years. Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us ! Citation Information

Question: Which actor played the roles of Fagin in the 1948 version of Oliver Twist, and King Charles I in the 1970 film, "Cromwell"?
Answer: ALEC GUINNESS